Do you feel genuine rage when someone chews loudly?
Does the sound of someone breathing heavily make you want to flee the room?
Can pen clicking or foot tapping send you into an emotional tailspin that feels completely out of proportion to the situation?
You’re not being dramatic, overly sensitive, or difficult. You might have misophonia, a condition where specific everyday sounds trigger intense emotional and physical responses that most people simply don’t experience.
While misophonia isn’t yet officially recognized in diagnostic manuals, it’s increasingly acknowledged by mental health professionals. And interestingly, people with misophonia tend to share certain psychological characteristics that help explain why these sounds affect them so intensely.
If you can’t stand the sound of people chewing (or breathing, or tapping), here are seven traits you likely display according to psychology.
1) You have heightened sensory processing
People with misophonia don’t just notice sounds more than others. They process them differently.
Your brain essentially amplifies certain auditory stimuli and treats them as threats, even when they’re completely harmless. This isn’t about having sensitive hearing in the traditional sense. You might have perfectly normal hearing thresholds. The issue is how your brain interprets and reacts to specific sounds once they reach your auditory cortex.
This heightened sensory processing often extends beyond just sound. Many people with misophonia also report sensitivity to certain visual stimuli (watching someone chew can be just as triggering as hearing it), textures, or even smells.
The amplification is automatic. You can’t simply “choose” not to notice these sounds or decide they don’t bother you. Your nervous system has already identified them as significant before your conscious mind even has time to respond.
2) You experience intense fight-or-flight responses
When trigger sounds occur, your body reacts as if you’re facing actual danger.
Your heart rate increases. Your muscles tense. You might start sweating. Your breathing changes. These aren’t choices or exaggerations. They’re automatic physiological responses controlled by your autonomic nervous system.
Research from Harvard Health notes that people with misophonia show significantly greater physiological signs of stress (increased sweat and heart rate) in response to trigger sounds compared to those without the condition.
This fight-or-flight activation is the same system that would engage if you encountered a dangerous animal or urgent threat. Except it’s happening in response to someone eating cereal or tapping a pen.
The intensity of these responses can be shocking even to you. You might find yourself feeling anger that escalates to rage within seconds, or anxiety that becomes panic. The emotional gas pedal gets floored before you have time to think.
What makes this particularly challenging is that you’re often fully aware your reaction is disproportionate. You know intellectually that someone chewing isn’t a real threat. But your body doesn’t care what you know. It’s already in defense mode.
3) You display elevated anxiety and stress levels overall
Misophonia rarely exists in isolation. People who experience these sound sensitivities often report higher baseline levels of anxiety and stress.
This makes sense when you consider the constant vigilance required. If you never know when a trigger sound might occur, you’re essentially living with low-level anticipatory anxiety. Will someone start chewing gum in the meeting? Will the person next to you on the plane be a loud breather? The uncertainty itself becomes stressful.
Over time, this can develop into generalized anxiety. You might find yourself anxious about social situations, meals with family, open office environments, or public transportation. Not because of social anxiety in the traditional sense, but because these settings increase the likelihood of encountering trigger sounds.
The relationship between misophonia and anxiety appears to work both ways. Anxiety can make misophonic reactions more intense, and frequent misophonic episodes can increase overall anxiety levels. It becomes a feedback loop that’s difficult to break without intervention.
4) You have obsessive-compulsive tendencies
There’s a notable overlap between misophonia and obsessive-compulsive traits, even if you don’t meet the full criteria for OCD.
You might find yourself hyper-focused on potential trigger sounds, almost scanning your environment for them. This preoccupation can feel intrusive, like thoughts you can’t easily dismiss. Once you’ve noticed a triggering sound, it’s nearly impossible to shift your attention away from it.
Many people with misophonia develop elaborate avoidance behaviors or rituals. Always carrying earbuds. Insisting on specific seating arrangements at restaurants. Creating strict rules about eating sounds in the home. These behaviors mirror the compulsive patterns seen in OCD, where actions are performed to reduce anxiety or prevent feared outcomes.
A significant percentage of people with misophonia also show traits consistent with obsessive-compulsive personality disorder. This includes perfectionism, rigidity in thinking, a strong need for control, and distress when things don’t meet specific standards.
The need for control makes sense given the nature of misophonia. These are sounds you cannot control. They’re created by others, often without awareness they’re doing anything wrong. This lack of control over your environment and your own responses can be deeply distressing.
5) You exhibit stronger emotional reactivity in general
People with misophonia often describe themselves as emotionally intense people overall, not just about sounds.
You might feel emotions more strongly than others seem to. Joy feels ecstatic, frustration feels overwhelming, sadness feels profound. This emotional intensity isn’t limited to negative emotions, though those are what tend to cause problems.
Psychology research suggests that misophonia is linked with higher levels of neuroticism, one of the major personality traits associated with emotional instability and intense reactions to stress. This doesn’t mean you’re neurotic in the colloquial sense. It means your emotional responses tend to be amplified across the board.
This heightened emotional reactivity can be both a gift and a burden. On one hand, you might experience deep empathy, passion for your interests, and strong connections when things go well. On the other hand, negative emotions can feel consuming and difficult to regulate.
The challenge with misophonia specifically is that trigger sounds create negative emotions that escalate rapidly. What starts as irritation can become rage within seconds. The emotional intensity doesn’t match the objective situation, but it matches your subjective experience completely.
6) You struggle with emotional regulation
Connected to emotional intensity is difficulty regulating those emotions once they arise.
When a trigger sound occurs, you might find it nearly impossible to calm yourself down while the sound continues. Even after the sound stops, the emotional residue can linger for minutes or hours. Some people describe feeling “hijacked” by their emotions, as if they’ve lost control over their own responses.
This difficulty with emotional regulation is particularly evident in the impulsive reactions some people with misophonia experience. You might snap at the person making the sound, leave the room abruptly, or say things you later regret. The reaction happens before you’ve had time to think it through.
Research published in Frontiers in Psychology found that among psychiatric disorders correlated with misophonia, borderline personality disorder was a significant predictor of misophonia severity after controlling for other factors. Emotional dysregulation is a core feature of borderline personality disorder.
Even people with milder misophonia often report frustration with their inability to “just ignore it” or “let it go.” It’s not for lack of trying. The regulatory mechanisms that help most people modulate emotional responses don’t seem to work the same way when trigger sounds are involved.
Learning emotional regulation skills through therapy can help, but it requires acknowledging that your baseline regulatory capacity for these specific triggers is genuinely different from most people’s.
7) You tend toward social isolation and avoidance
When certain sounds reliably trigger intense distress, avoiding those sounds becomes a logical coping strategy. Unfortunately, this often means avoiding people and situations.
You might turn down dinner invitations, skip family gatherings, avoid movie theaters, or work from home whenever possible. These aren’t antisocial tendencies in the personality disorder sense. They’re protective behaviors developed in response to repeated painful experiences.
The isolation often comes with significant costs. Relationships can suffer when others don’t understand why you’re declining invitations or leaving situations unexpectedly. People might interpret your behavior as rude, overly sensitive, or rejecting, when really you’re just trying to protect yourself from overwhelming sensory experiences.
This avoidance can extend to broader social anxiety. If you’ve had negative experiences (snapping at someone for chewing, having to leave a work meeting abruptly), you might start feeling anxious about all social situations, not just ones where trigger sounds are likely.
The tendency toward isolation can also reinforce other characteristics on this list. Less social interaction means fewer opportunities to practice emotional regulation. More time alone means more time ruminating on how misophonia impacts your life. The cycle perpetuates itself.
Conclusion
If you recognized yourself in these characteristics, you’re not alone. Estimates suggest anywhere from 6% to 20% of people experience misophonia to some degree.
Treatment options do exist, though misophonia remains understudied compared to many other conditions.
Cognitive behavioral therapy has shown promise in helping people manage their responses. Some people benefit from sound therapy or other adaptations like white noise or noise-canceling headphones. Working with a therapist who understands misophonia can make a significant difference.
If you suspect you have misophonia, know that seeking help isn’t an overreaction. This condition can significantly impact quality of life, relationships, and mental health. You deserve support in managing it, just as you would with any other condition that affects your wellbeing.
The sounds might not go away. But with understanding and appropriate support, your relationship to those sounds can change.
